had intended to be cool and crisply business-like and look what had happened! She had ended up sounding like a petulant child instead.
She scuffed one foot against the bottom rail of the fence. 'Yes,' she muttered. Oh, God, she still sounded like Megan after a tantrum. She cleared her throat. 'Yes, I will marry you,' she said more clearly. 'But only if you sign a formal agreement allowing Copley Travel access and control over the site.'
'Fine,' said Mal.
Copper waited for more, but apparently that was it. 'Fine?' she repeated, her voice rising in outrage. 'Fine! Is that all you can say?'
'What else do you want me to say? I've got no objection to a formal agreement-quite the opposite. I suggest that before we get married we get a legal contract drawn up that specifies the conditions that we've both agreed to in advance. I'm not risking another divorce settlement like last time, so when we agree a date to end the marriage, we can agree the financial implications as well.'
'I don't want your money,' said Copper with distaste. 'AH I'll want is assurance that Copley Travel can continue to use Birraminda after the marriage is over.'
'That's something that can be discussed when we draw up the contract,' said Mal indifferently. 'AH I'm saying is that we should know exactly where we stand before we get married. I'm sure a woman of your business acumen will see the sense in a legal contract.'
The prospect of reducing a marriage to a number of clauses in a contract chilled Copper to the bone, but, having brought up the idea of a written agreement, she was hardly in a position to object. 'Right now I think we've got more important things to discuss than a pre-nuptial contract,' she said.
'Like what?'
'Like…well, like everything' said Copper in frustration. She lifted her arms and then let them drop helplessly to her sides. 'For a start, what are we going to tell everybody?'
Mal turned so that he was leaning back against the fence and considered her. 'We just tell them we're getting married,' he said, and Copper hugged her arms together edgily.
'We'll need to do more than that to convince my parents that I'm serious about going to live with a perfect stranger! They'd be horrified if they knew why we're getting married,' she pointed out. 'I'll only marry you on the condition that they never, ever guess what I'm doing-and that means convincing them that we're a genuine couple.'
'What's a genuine couple?' asked Mal with a sardonic look. 'Every marriage is different, so why should we be any less genuine than the others?'
'You know what I mean!' said Copper crossly. 'My parents need to believe that we're getting married because we're madly in love, not because we've agreed some cold-blooded business deal.'
Mal hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his dust-encrusted jeans. 'That's not a problem, is it?'
How could he sound so casual about it? Copper eyed him resentfully. 'No, but I'm wondering how good your acting is!'
'We're both going to have to get used to acting,' said Mal, unperturbed. 'There's no point to the whole exercise unless everyone believes that you're a suitably loving wife-particularly Brett. Do you think you'll be able to convince him that you're more interested in me than you are in your business?'
'That depends on whether you'll be able to convince him that you're a suitably loving husband,' she said tartly.
'I expect I can manage that.'
Copper was stung by his laconic attitude. They might have been discussing the chances of rain-although, come to think of it, Mal would probably get a lot more excited about that! 'There's a bit more to marriage than just behaving affectionately in front of other people, you know! I think we should establish now just how 'married' we're going to be. Real wives aren't just housekeepers with rings on their fingers,' she went on with some difficulty. 'They share things with their husbands in private as well as in public…like bedrooms, for instance.'
'We're not likely to persuade Brett that you belong with me unless we share a bedroom,' Mal agreed dryly. 'And a bed.' He glanced at Copper, who was picking a splinter of wood out of the fence post, her face averted. 'Or is that the problem?'
'It's not a. problem? Copper said, flustered now that she had finally come to the point. She pushed her hair awkwardly behind her ears. 'It's just…well, yes, I think we should decide now whether…you know, whether you… whether we…
She could hear herself floundering and risked a peep at Mal. There was the faintest suggestion of a smile bracketing his mouth. That meant he knew exactly what she was trying to say but wasn't going to make it any easier for her. He was just leaning back against the rail, looking cool and calm and completely relaxed and watching her with those infuriatingly unreadable brown eyes. A spurt of real anger helped Copper pull herself together and she turned to face him directly.
'What I'm trying to ask,' she said icily, 'is whether you're expecting us to sleep together?'
'Why not?' said Mal with the same aggravating calmness.
'Well, we…we hardly know each other.'
'That didn't stop us before, did it?'
There was a long, long silence. Copper froze and then, very slowly, she turned her head to look at him. 'So you do remember!'
'Did you think I'd forgotten?' There was an enigmatic look in Mal's brown eyes, and a faint smile touched his mouth.
'Why didn't you say anything before?' she asked huskily. She felt very peculiar, as if the past and the present had suddenly collapsed together into a jumble of conflicting emotions where nothing was certain any more.
'You didn't.' With a shrug Mal turned back to watch the horses. 'I wasn't sure at first. I recognised your name as soon as Megan told me, but you looked so different,' he said slowly, as if visualising the Copper who had stood clutching the verandah post and comparing her with the girl who had walked out of the crowd towards him across the sand.
Her hair had been longer then, dishevelled from the sea and streaked with sunshine, and like almost everyone else on her tour she had worn shorts and a faded sleeveless top. Only her smile had marked her out from the ordinary-her smile and the clear green eyes that had looked so directly into his.
'Your hair's shorter now-smarter, I suppose,' he went on after a moment. 'You had sunglasses on, you were wearing a suit, for God's sake, and I simply wasn't expecting you. It hardly seemed possible that you could be the same girl. And then you took off your sunglasses and I saw your eyes and I realised that it really was you. By then…'
Mal paused, lifting his shoulders as if searching for the best way to explain. 'Well, by then it was clear that even if you had recognised me, you weren't going to acknowledge it. I don't know-I thought you might feel awkward, even embarrassed about working for me if I raised the subject, and since I was assuming that you'd come as a new housekeeper it just seemed easier to follow your lead and pretend that you were a stranger.' He glanced sideways at Copper. 'It's been seven years, after all,' he added. 'There was no reason why you should have remembered me.'
No reason? Copper thought about his lips against her skin, about the mastery of his hands and the sleek, supple strength of his body. She thought about the way he had made her senses sing and the breathtaking passion they had shared.
She wanted to look at the horses, at the fence, at her hands, at anything other than Mal, but an irresistible force was dragging her gaze round and against her will she found herself looking into his eyes, drowning in the brown depths that sucked her into the past, sending her spinning back seven years to the moment when she had looked up, laughing, from the crowd and seen him watching her.
Mal had been travelling on his own, Copper with a group due to move on in three days, but none of that had mattered at the time. They had been more than just fellow Australians far from home; they had been two halves of a whole, clicking naturally into place. Being together had seemed utterly right, as if it had been somehow inevitable that they should meet that way. It was like a compass swinging to north, like an arrow heading straight for its target, like walking through a door and knowing that you had come home without even realising that you had been away.
It had been time out of time. For three days they had talked and laughed. They had swum in the turquoise sea.
